HP OfficeJet Pro L7780

HP is known for its versatile line of business and home office equipment. One of their latest releases is the HP OfficeJet Pro L7780 All-In-One. This office machine operates as both a color and a black and white printer, copier, scanner and fax machine. I've had mine for a few weeks, so it's time for a review...

Review: The HP OfficeJet Pro L7780 All-In-One

I'll start by saying this: the HP OfficeJet Pro L7780 All-In-One looks good on my desk. With the black and silver motif, the curved lines, dimensions of about 21 by 19 by 17 inches, and 47 buttons on the front control panel, it's an impressive desk ornament for about $400. But it does more than look pretty. In addition to printing, faxing, scanning and copying, the L7780 has some unique features that I really like.

This printer is networkable, which means you can plug it directly into a network router and print from any computer on your home or business network. But it's also wireless... which means that you can put it almost anywhere and send print jobs from your desktop or laptop. It doesn't have to be within three feet of your computer or the router. And if you like the idea of a paperless office, the Digital Filing feature can scan documents, create searchable PDFs, and store them on your hard drive or a network share folder. Wirelessly, if you like. I thought the wireless feature would be tricky, but to my surprise, it displayed a list of available wireless networks on the built-in screen, prompted me for the password, and that was it!

I found it fairly easy to set up the printer and related software applications. When selecting a location for your HP OfficeJet Pro L7780 you need to leave a buffer zone around the machine to allow for air flow, and easy access to the machine's doors and paper trays.

Printing Specs and Speeds

The HP OfficeJet Pro L7880 All-In-One has the capability to operate in color, or in black and white. In black and white mode, this machine can produce up to 35 pages per minute with a resolution of up to 1200 x 1200 dpi. In color mode, the print speeds are just slightly slower, up to 34 pages per minute with a resolution of up to 1200 x 1200 dpi (4800 x 1200 optimized). An automatic duplexing option is also available, which makes printing two-sided copies much simpler.

Photo Printing

If you are a photographer then you will appreciate the special photo printing options offered by the HP OfficeJet L7780 All-In-One. First of all there is a direct photo printing option. This allows you to select to print directly from your memory card or use the PictBridge slot to connect your camera directly to the printer. This OfficeJet L7780 supports memory sticks, xD-Picture Cards, CompactFlash Type I and II, and Secure Digital/MultiMediaCard/Secure MultiMediaCards.

The control panel sports a 2.4-inch color display where you can preview and edit photos. You can even zoom out to a 9x9 image view to scan the contents of the memory card quickly. I love being able to print a scannable photo proof sheet. If you've never seen this in action, it's very cool. You select photos by shading in the little circles on the proof sheet, indicate how many copies, and select a layout. After making your selections, you scan the proof sheet, and the machine will print your photos. Borderless photos can be printed in sizes up to 8.5 x 24 inches.

Making Copies

The HP OfficeJet Pro L7780 All-In-One is a versatile copier. You can select from a number of paper sizes -- letter sized, legal, statement sized, executive, envelopes, 8 by 10 inches, 4 by 6 inches, and a bunch of others. The primary paper tray can hold 250 sheets at a time while the optional second paper tray is capable of holding up to 350 sheets. I bought the second tray so I can stash an entire ream of paper in the machine. Copying options for this machine include collating, duplexing, as well scaling options that range between 25 percent and 400 percent. And again, the color display on the control panel helps you choose the options you want.

Faxing and Scanning

This machine is unique in that it can send and receive both black & white and color faxes. The average fax transmission speed is about 3 second per page, with a maximum fax resolution of 300 by 300 dpi. The incoming fax memory can handle about 125 pages at a time.

This machine offers both flatbed and automatic document feeder scanning, with a maximum scanning surface of 8.5 inches by 14 inches, which is fairly standard for this type of machine. The scanner has a 48-bit depth and has an optical scanner resolution of up to 2400 dpi and an enhanced scanner resolution of up to 19200 dpi. The sheet feeder can also be used to fax or scan multiple page documents. That's a very nice feature if you typically work with more than one page. The ReadIris OCR software can be used to convert scanned pages to machine-readable text, and you can scan directly into the installed programs on your computer, such as Word, PhotoShop or your email program.

Earlier, I mentioned the Digital Filing feature, which lets you scan directly to a shared network folder. This is especially handy in an office environment where there are multiple users. The five Speed Dial buttons on the control panel can be used to select a destination folder for the scanned document or image.

Pros and Cons of the HP OfficeJet L7780 All-In-One

Overall, I can enthusiastically recommend the HP OfficeJet L7780 All-In-One printer, fax, scanner, copier. It offers a very nice mix of consumer and office applications, with the convenience of one machine to print, copy, scan and fax. It's fast, the print quality is excellent, and economical to operate. According HP it'll cost about 1.5 cents for a black page and upwards of 6 cents for color pages, depending on the complexity. The direct photo printing capabilities are great for both office and home user, and if you do a lot of printing, or if you need to print two-sided copies then this is a fabulous machine. The wireless capability and digital filing are just the icing on the cake for me.

On the other hand, there are some potential drawbacks. The photo menu is not always intuitive, and some of the options could be re-arranged to fix this. Some customers report that they've experienced paper jams when doing high-volume copying. But I've never used a *copier* that didn't jam on occasion. And because this is an inkjet, not a laser printer, it uses ink cartridges instead of toner. This means that you'll have to stay stocked up on the black, magenta, cyan, and yellow ink cartridges. Yes, toner is generally less expensive over the long haul, but the trade-off is that color inkjets cost about half the price of a color laser.

Most recent comments on "HP OfficeJet Pro L7780"

Bob, what are the input power requirements? Is it just 110V,60Hz or does it also do 220V,50Hz?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Not sure, but I would think so, since HP is a huge international company. It might be on the HP website.

Posted by:
David W
24 Oct 2007

Re my ealier posting, would you mind having a look at the back of the device? The input power requirements should be printed on a label near the power socket.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The power line plugs into a brick that accepts 100-240V and 50/60Hz inputs.

Posted by:
Victor
01 Nov 2007

My new L7780 was put into use mid August 2007. My reaction to its performance so far can be summed up as well pleased. I love the duplex feature and am amazed at how many opportunities there are to use it. I use the wireless feature which I don't really need, however, it works flawlessly. When I bought it, I did not believe the copy speeds that are quoted. However, I was surprised again, it prints very fast. After a couple months of use, I'm very happy that I decided to buy this printer.

Posted by:
Bob
12 Dec 2007

When the L7780 is connected wirelessly to a computer running Vista does the duplex printing jobs print correctly? I currently have an Officejet 7410 and using the lastest HP drivers the back pages of the duplex jobs print upside down.

I recently bought the 7780 and am pleased with everything but the wireless networking. I have found that this printer is incompatible with Linksys routers! When you try and set it up, the printer "freezes." This is a big flaw in the product (considering how popular Linksys routers are), and I'm trying to get the word out because HP has extremely unhelpful customer service reps who don't know about this flaw; message posts may be the only way a hapless consumer could find out what the problem is. One HP rep said there's a patch coming out but I'm still waiting...

Posted by:
jjj
13 Jun 2008

Per HP this unit is not compatible with Windows Vista and/or Office 2007 depending who you talk to at HP. It has great features if they would only work. This printer has been a pain since day one. Save yourself huge disappointment and buy a canon Pixma 850 (network capable); a lot less trouble to set up and use and much moore reliable. Within a day of receiving the HP I started calling tech support. They replaced the first unit with a refurbinished unit but problesm continue. At least the second one does not shred papaer and jam everytime I turn around. Both units continually cut off the last couple of lines of text when printing a word 2007 document and the first column of data in excell worksheets. This machine will make you hate life given half a chance. Buy something else. Your life will be easier for it.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I'm certain the machine will work on Vista, with the proper drivers. I've printed many spreadsheets on mine, never a problem. Your problems sound like they are driver-related.

Posted by:
RM
16 Jul 2008

I have the HP L7780 and the HP Pavillion dv9000 with Vista. I don't have any complaints about the multifunction machine except that every time I unplug everything from my laptop to take it out to the other room I have to reinstall the printer drivers when I plug back in. Also, we had a power failure today and I couldn't get the laptop to see the printer. I tried turning the printer off but it just continued with "shutting down" so I pulled the plugs from the back for a few seconds and the replaced them and it still wouldn't work. I rebooted my laptop and it still wouldn't work. I pulled the cord from the USB hub for a few seconds and replaced it but it still wouldn't work. The last thing I tried is deleting the printer from the list of printers and reinstalling it entirely. Wha la! It's finally working again after over an hour of fussing with it!

Posted by:
theresa Holmes
04 Jun 2009

I have a HP PSC 750 printer
which prints, scans and copies
which of the HP printers now on the market
are similiar to this one
other than the HPF4280(which I have seen bad
results from many of my friends re color prints

Posted by:
foxyred
21 Sep 2009

I've gone through 3 of these printers recently, all of them had problems with the scanning appl., it's connected wirelessly, all three times, I had to waste days with the HP tech. support people, who mostly are Indian,and already there is a communications problem; after many hours and days, got the 2nd one to work properly; then the paper tray broke. The replacement printer is now having the same scanning problems of not communicating with my computer from their HP Solutions Centers; however, I just discovered that in paint and CS, I can scan; so I'm assuming the problem is with their software. I would like to be able to use the scanner from the printer and espcially transferring images from the printer to the computer, but I can't. I disgusting with HP! Any suggestions on how I can get this printer scanner to work properly? Thx

Posted by:
Mark Lockie
13 Oct 2009

Generally i have found this printer very good but i have one problem which i need some help. Problem: OS is Home XP, MS word is 97. This problem is in word only. when printing i can use the icon and print a single copy with no problem

if i try and print from the menu the print box appears and when asked to print the printer box states that it is spooling and then closes the word program down. has any one any ideas?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Very strange. I would try removing and then re-installing the printer software.

Posted by:
Lin Wilcox
06 Apr 2010

On Ehow.com they have a very good article on this and other problems.

What is the major difference between an Officejet and an Inkjet printer?

Posted by:
TLe
29 Nov 2010

My L7780 always dial 1 for Faxing regardless of what i put in.
I can not figure out how to tell the machine NOT to dial long distant. Most other machine will have a feature to avoid this problem

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